Insurers turn to technology to cut claims inefficiencies

Recent weeks have seen moves by insurers to utilise technology with the aim of making the claims process more efficient.

It is perhaps unsurprising that insurers are attempting to cut costs by embracing technologies such as artificial intelligence, while improvements on the customer acquisition side remain challenging.

Focusing on streamlining the claims process is easier to justify due to immediate savings on both time and money, while benefits elsewhere are harder to quantify.

Two examples in October highlight the desire to improve claims processes and reduce costs. Australian insurer QBE agreed a deal with Risk Genius for the analytics company to manage claims in a multi-year agreement.

The technology start-up will use its experience in automation to streamline the process, and will manage 125,000 policies from 2018. QBE has invested $50m into the partnership at this stage.

This came in the same week that Tractable technology launched AI Estimating, which handles the entire claims process, from first notification of loss to estimate, in just a couple of minutes.

Tractable previously worked with Ageas through its AI Approval platform, which processed claims. This upgrade suggests insurers are keen to integrate automation to save costs in the claims process.

The question for the industry, however, is whether cutting costs in the claims process is the most pressing need for technology when consumer satisfaction and trust in insurers remain so low.

Claims experience

Improving the claims experience is always beneficial however, and will have a positive impact for customers, but it is undoubtedly the easier side to target.

While it is harder to gauge the savings that can be achieved by improving customer acquisition, the increasing likelihood of multinational tech companies with vast amounts of data, such as Amazon, entering the market make it equally as important.